Protecting Merritt a balancing act

Published 6:01 pm, Friday, December 28, 2012

The December 16 article on preservation vs. safety with respect to tree removal on the Merritt Parkway does not adequately describe the Merritt Parkway Conservancy's efforts to maintain and preserve this iconic roadway, Connecticut's unique 37½-mile linear park.

Our stewardship seeks to ensure a balance between the functionality of the parkway as a major thoroughfare and the preservation of the original design of its distinctive bridges, service areas and landscape. Indeed, the landscape of the Merritt is one of the defining features of the corridor that we strive to protect.

In conjunction with the Connecticut Department of Transportation, we review selective tree removal plans and participate in onsite inspections. Our inspections have safely saved many specimen trees. Additionally, with the DOT's permission, we have hired professional arborists to clear invasives and remove dead trees to maintain healthy native plant growth. Recently, Hurricane Sandy damaged a great number of trees along the parkway, requiring removal, and we will pursue with the DOT restoration in the most affected areas.

We continue to provide reviews by our contracted landscape architect professionals to restore the landscape after major disruptions due to road construction. Also, our Tributes to Spring program for the planting of dogwoods, mountain laurels, rhododendrons, and azaleas is designed to restore the springtime beauty on the parkway.

In the upcoming year, be assured that we will continue to advocate for the protection and preservation of the parkway's landscape -- including its beautiful trees. To learn more about our programs, including the historic restoration and adaptive reuse of the Merritt Parkway service areas, please visit www.merrittparkway.org.

In view of the Newtown carnage, constitutional lawyers should present Justice Scalia, and his "original intent" Supreme Court associates, the following argument on the interpretation of the Second Amendment:

The firearms available at the time of the Second Amendment were all muzzle loaders, which have a reloading time of almost one minute. By limiting gun ownership for private citizens to muzzle loaders, the horrible loss of life of innocents in massacres would be greatly reduced. Moreover, modern muzzle-loading rifles and pistols are supremely accurate, and the pollution of our forests by discarded brass cartridges would be eliminated. These muzzle loaders could be provided to gun owners in a massive exchange program, thus keeping the firearm manufacturers in business.

Gerald Falbel

Stamford

Reason is clear

To the editor:

It is amazing that the president of UConn is clueless as to why the ACC does not want UConn as a member. No conference wants a school that is notorious for violations associated with recruitment and poor academic standings. Simply put, both the football and the men's basketball programs are not clean.

If Duke can be a top team in the country with a 100 percent graduation rate why cannot UConn come even close? The women's team is the knight in shining armor and there is not a conference in the country that would not want them.